Dead Flesh
by lerouret1
Summary: I've always wondered about that backward glance Rumlow gave the Winter Soldier while he was being tortured. Rumlow never seemed to me to be bad for the fun of it, but for the logic of it. Sure, he wasn't someone I'd want to run into in a dark alley, but if you think about it, his actions were reasonable for a man who believed in his mission.


_Historically speaking, karma was never kind to the Winter Soldier's handlers. Rumlow was grateful he'd never been promoted to that position._

Burns hurt.

That was all Rumlow could think about for the first couple of months. Fuck SHIELD, fuck Hydra, fuck everyone with a goddamn chainsaw. Burns hurt. A lot.

Broken bones were straightened out and ached for a bit; bullet holes stung and tore and itched while they healed. Deep cuts throbbed nauseatingly and road rash prickled and tore. But the pain faded after a day, two days, a week.

Not burns, though. Burns hurt.

Most of Rumlow's body was covered in burns, first to third degree, all in varying states of depth and intensity. Some days, the burns across his face, healing in chunks of misshapen tissue, were the worst, and he would beg to have his hands cuffed to the bed rails to keep from clawing at them. Other days, it was the shallow burns on his legs with the plastic of his tac suit debrided out, raw and persistent. The medicos Hydra assigned to him were wary of using opioids on one of the agency's top assets. They had lost so much already.

Rumlow didn't blame them for that. The pain was bad, especially those first few months. But the last thing Hydra needed was to lose another good gun. He'd put a bullet in his head before letting them down again.

The fall of SHIELD and Hydra's subsequent tactical withdrawal made rehab a chore. He couldn't even hide in plain sight, dammit, not when so much had been flying around the media about his old STRIKE team and stupid goddamn Natasha fucking Romanoff blowing the cover off everyone and their damn grandmas. Hydra moved him from hospital to rehab to halfway house, each shabbier than the last, slipping him high-grade anesthetics and antibiotics to counteract the shitty care he was given. Then that self-righteous prick Hawkeye Barton started sniffing around, and Rumlow was forced underground.

Wrapped like Karloff's Mummy, he made passage to Mexico, then Honduras, and caught a red-eye from Recife to Gabon, turning his face away from security cameras and changing his hoodies every twelve hours. An opium dealer in Djibouti gave him some trouble, but Rumlow was just as strong as he ever was, muscle and bone beneath the shredded flesh of his body snapping the man's neck without a thought. He couldn't risk discovery and capture. SHIELD was still there, hiding in the shadows, opportunistic, scrounging the best bits from their and Hydra's remains, a Frankenstein's monster of shoddy intel and self-righteousness.

Karloff again. Rumlow really needed to get out more.

White men stand out like sore thumbs in certain parts of the world, and the last thing Hydra needed was another asset picked up and turned over. He fought his way north, brutal and efficient, and found himself holed up in a tiny bed-sit in Chișinău. The little American money he had was more than welcome to his elderly, grim-faced landlady, who left him thankfully alone. No motherly instincts out of this dried-up old harridan – Rumlow figured what the old lady didn't know about hardship and opportunity in a former Soviet block country wasn't worth knowing.

Rumlow could respect that. There was no sense being impractical. Sentiment was only good for pressing an advantage.

So he kept a close eye on everything and everyone, peering carefully through the torn and dusty curtains of his dingy bed-sit, stalking Chișinău's gloomy streets hugging old concrete walls, treating everyone with curt courtesy right down to the little boys kicking a dirty ball around by the Triumphal Arch. He knew he was being watched closely – could feel it on his bubbled, screaming skin – but he also knew he couldn't do a damn thing about it.

The pain was bad some days, aching so deep he could feel it rippling on his skeleton and all he could do was lie in bed and groan. Opium helped, but he couldn't rely on it overmuch, because he never knew when he'd need to cut and run again. He preferred to tough it out, keeping sober and alert, but the pain wore at him over time, sanding the edge off. He needed that edge, needed to be sharp and aware, and between the constant ache and weariness, and the pull of whatever painkillers he could get his hands on, the days were very long.

Rumlow wasn't very well-educated, and a lot of people at SHIELD – and even at Hydra – interpreted that to mean he wasn't very smart. Thug, goon, hood, hitman, meathead, cutthroat – elevated to the STRIKE team in SHIELD hadn't meant those superlatives left his evaluations. Rumlow allowed them their side-eyed approbation, because Hydra had trained him to be better than their perception of him. Brock Rumlow was no idiot. He knew enough to hide in his cocksure sneer and broad, flat accent. Those assholes didn't know what went on behind his flint-cold eyes.

He took that knowledge sometimes, that he had hoodwinked them all, and coddled it close. It comforted him to know he'd gotten away. Whoever his secret watcher was kept their distance, and some days he assumed it was simply a minor member of the Russian mob, keeping an eye on him. He wondered occasionally how long he would stay hidden from SHIELD and its allies, but at least – touch wood – Mrs. Lungu preferred his dollars to anyone else's, and held her tongue.

Rumlow pulled the flat cap down over his eyes and hunched up into the rough hand-knit scarf. He could feel his watcher's eyes on him, but a quick glance around didn't show anything obvious. The cold, dry air whistling through the city's central square was gray and acrid, but the gas heat belching out of the café warmed his aching legs, and the hot, harsh coffee kept him alert. Old Josan and his wife Evelina leaned over the battered counter and stared past Rumlow into the square, their eyes blank and hard. The boy who wiped the tables moved with slovenly imprecision, pushing his greasy rag around the chipped Formica, leaving streaks of crumbs and coffee in abstract swirls as he went. He skirted round Rumlow as though by instinct. No one in Chișinău was stupid enough to meet his eye.

Still, someone was actively watching him right now, right at this instant. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name. Rumlow couldn't pinpoint the location, but he could feel it all the same. He took a sip of the harsh, fruity coffee, and when he put it down, accidentally knocked his bandaged left arm on the chair. He hissed a little and cradled it against his chest. If only he'd been covered in adamantium instead of skin.

 _"Make him look at you. Cause pain if necessary. He'll ignore you if you don't make him pay attention."_

The memory was brief, bleached white and cold. The Soldier's old handler, Something Ionut – Kristian, Dr. Kristian Ionut – (Eastern European, old Soviet-era block refugee, maybe from Moldova if the universe believed in karma, which Rumlow totally did) showing the Soldier's new handler the machinery. "Be harsh, be severe. He is a dog, stupid and violent. Show him you are his boss." And that new handler, smirking at the Asset, flicking the stinger baton so it buzzed and crackled in the Asset's face. "See this, _Soldat_?" he'd snarled, and the rest of the team had laughed at the Asset's pale eyes, dull and cringing back, nothing but a frightened animal. "Yeah, that's right, you stinking mutt. Heel."

Rumlow remembered that day, the new handler showing off to the rest of the team, brutalizing the Asset with the clean efficiency of one inured to causing pain. Rumlow had considered the actions superfluous. The Asset was already a practical success, and the protocols in place to control him were effective. There had been no reason, beyond the handler's ego, or his insecurity, to use force like that. It wasn't like the Soldier would fight back. He rarely did, and only when protocols weren't followed. If you went down the list, checked off everything the Asset needed, further force was unnecessary and therefore wasteful. Rumlow's own time as an assistant handler proved this. He spoke to the Asset cleanly, clearly, meeting those blank pale eyes with his own, sharpening his focus to gather the electricity-scattered attention. Rumlow was careful to fill his physical needs, wiping and freezing him afterwards to be resurrected to kill anew. The Asset's functionality could be controlled like clock-work. All Rumlow had to do was to follow the rules.

That one time the Asset had missed a rendezvous, wandered off on god knew what impulse, had been that particular handler's last chance to control the Asset. It had taken Rumlow a week to track the Soldier down, finding him staring and vacant in the middle of a forest, blood-soaked, weak with hunger and thirst. Brock instructed the men under his command to feed and water the Asset, and he himself had guided him back. _"Make him look at you. He won't obey you if you don't make him look at you."_ Rumlow looked, made the Asset look, broke through that blank stare and guided him back to base.

The rest of the team teased Rumlow for weeks afterwards, calling the Asset his "pet," because he would follow Rumlow whenever he gestured. What had it been? The food and water? The simple, unadorned command to follow? The lack of stinger baton, whip, slapper, brass knuckle, worse? Rumlow's unwillingness to push harder than necessary? Rumlow refused to explain himself. It was the mark of efficiency to achieve prime result with minimum effort, and Hydra rewarded efficiency.

Rumlow rubbed the back of his neck. You couldn't train someone to know when they were being watched; you either felt it, or you didn't. It was instinct. Rumlow had this instinct and knew he was being actively observed; it was a prickling on his skin, worse than the burn. The pain from his burns he knew and understood; it ebbed and waned, ached deep into his bones or shrieked across the surface of his skin, but he was familiar with it and it was part of him. But someone knew he was there, knew where he was sitting drinking coffee in Josan's café, and Rumlow didn't know where they were.

This bothered him. His unobtrusive watcher never did anything, never showed themselves, never interfered, but still, Rumlow wished he knew who he needed to watch out for.

He finished his coffee and flagged the boy down for a refill. Coffee was really the only thing they did well here, coffee and Evelina's pastries. They filled him up, took the edge off his hunger, and the meager warmth counteracted the chill in his bones. The boy gave him fresh coffee and Evelina brought him more mamaliga, still hot from the oven.

He was getting slack here. He'd have to move soon. But he'd made himself comfortable, safety an artificial construct, but pacifying just the same. He told himself he would stay until the worst of the pain ebbed – another week, four weeks, two months – then move on. Where next, he couldn't say – Ukraine? Budapest? Maybe hook back up with his remaining Hydra brethren, and get the itch of watching eyes off the back of his burning neck.

He'd have to get himself back in prime fighting condition first, though. Hydra understandably didn't accommodate weakness. The weak link in the chain brought the whole mess down. God, look at DC. If Pierce's vanity hadn't got in the way, Insight would've done its job beautifully. No, if Rumlow wanted to fly back to the nest, he'd have to be prepared to fight for his position. He was almost ready now; would be ready, if not for the low nagging pain from his burns, a constant, niggling presence.

Like his watcher. Fucking hell, who _was_ that?

Rumlow finished his coffee and mamaliga and rose to his feet. He forced himself to stand upright, but the burned skin on his belly screamed at him in protest. He clamped his jaw over the pain and dropped a few American dollars on the table. He knew Evelina and the boy would fight over the bills like they always did, and Josan would snatch them away from the winner. They never learned.

Keeping his aching shoulder to the wall, Rumlow made his way back around the café to his rooms. Mrs. Lungu was standing on the front stoop, willow broom in hand, staring hard at him. Rumlow's back crinkled uncomfortably. Something was wrong.

He nodded to her and, without stopping, passed his building by and kept walking. He felt her eyes on him all the way down the block. His breath was steady and his heartbeat normal. He'd been made. Time to move. He passed a brief regret for the stash of comforting opium in his rucksack, but strode on towards the train station.

He knew if he was careful he could make it to Budapest, and thence to Sokovia where remnants of Hydra still lurked, and Rumlow was always careful. He rounded the corner of Aleea Garii to see the tile-topped station, ornate and slightly dingy just like the rest of Chișinău, sunlight filtered through the smog of cigarette smoke and diesel fuel emissions, and stopped dead.

He'd found his watcher.

The Winter Soldier slouched against one of the station's archways, greasy, unshorn, unkempt as always, but those beetling pale eyes bored into Rumlow's, sharp and present. Gone was the low animal cunning he'd always associated with the Asset; months out of cryo and away from the chair had given him a personality, and Rumlow's chest constricted with fear for the first time in a very, very long while. He'd always known that there was a man hidden in that wreck of a weapon, and that if the man ever resurfaced, anyone within a one mile radius was in for a very bad time.

Now, he supposed, was his time.

Rumlow had a Glock and a butterfly knife, both things he knew the Soldier would cast aside with a bored flicker. Blood and bone may have been strong, but the outer shell of burned skin slowed and weakened Rumlow, and he knew that even at his best, he was no match for the Asset. But he didn't check his pace, subconsciously presenting a serene face to the populace who hummed and jostled around him. He turned his face away from the Soldier and made his way to the far archway, skin between his shoulder blades tight, waiting for the plunge of a knife or quick cold shock of a bullet. He saw out of the corner of his eye the Asset move, drooping, lank hair beneath its stained ball cap swinging around the stubbled cheeks. A malodorous Russian cigarette was gummed to his lower lip and his hands were shoved into his pockets.

The Soldier stood in front of Rumlow and raised his head.

 _Make him look at you._

Rumlow looked.

He looked up into that furious oval, the eyes burning white-hot with hate. He saw the jaw tighten, and heard over the low din of the crowd the familiar _creak-whirr_ of the adamantium plates as the left hand made a fist. Hell, Rumlow had always known his life would be truncated – nature of the beast, right? – but he spared a moment of relief that the Soldier would make it quick.

Then the Asset stepped back a pace, and shoved a rucksack into Rumlow's hands. Rumlow's rucksack, bulging, still warm from its resting place on the Soldier's back.

" _Ubiraysya otsyuda*,_ " he growled.

Rumlow blinked. His Russian wasn't very good, but the quick jerk of the Asset's head toward the station interior was unmistakable. He nodded sharply.

" _Spasibo**_ ," he said. The Soldier's mouth twisted into a sardonic sideways grin.

" _Uberi sebya s moyey pryamoy vidimosti, vrag moyego vraga***_ ," he said, and slapped something in Rumlow's hand. Rumlow looked down, surprised to see a roll of American dollars.

When he looked up, the Soldier was gone.

*" _Ubiraysya otsyuda" – Get out of here_

 _** "Spasibo" – Thank you_

 _*** "Uberi sebya s moyey pryamoy vidimosti, vrag moyego vraga" – Get out of my line of sight, enemy of my enemy_


End file.
